HOW TRUMP WON
The Real Reason Democrats Lost
If only Joe Biden had not tried to run again. Or if he had not embraced Netanyahu. Or if the Democrats had not nominated a woman of color. Or if Harris had not chosen Walz for Vice President. Those are lines I hear all too often from my progressive friends. And they have other excuses for why the Democrats lost the last election to a convicted felon who promised to be an authoritarian dictator. Each of those reasons contributed to the loss, but I believe there is nothing the Democrats could have done differently to win. They ran a solid campaign based upon proven performance, exceptional talent, honesty, and integrity.
The Republicans could offer no performance record, no talent, no honesty, and no integrity. Their campaign was based entirely on lies, misrepresentations, and promises that could never be filled. But they had a secret weapon: an unprecedented propaganda machine led by Fox News, abetted by Andrew Breitbart, right-wing social media sites, and radio gasbags, and heavily reinforced on the internet by state operatives from Russia and other countries. It was those foreign operatives who reached the young voters. The Democrats could not have created such a propaganda machine because doing that requires a level of deceit and subversion of truth that honest people cannot tolerate.
The Democrats had been doing a great job and they knew it. They assumed their record was so clearly obvious that they exuded an air of confidence in their ability to take it even further. But competence is rarely recognized by people who do not share those abilities, and the Republicans played that factor by defining the Democrats as snobby elitists who think they are better than the riffraff working stiffs. Joe Biden is no intellectual heavyweight, and he suffers signs of aging, but he was smart enough to surround himself with highly capable and experienced people who understood economics and international relations. And that only fed the Republican narrative.
The Republicans won the election and are now proving beyond any trace of doubt that they are fundamentally incapable of governing. Trump is correct when he says we will experience pain but eventually see great success, but not because he knows what he is doing. The pain has not yet kicked in but the hurt will begin over the summer months. And, at some point in the future, our country will recover the rule of law and democracy, although it may never regain its long-time position of global leadership.
In the meantime, we are experiencing a dangerous experiment that will determine the value and future of government agencies, programs, and services by eliminating or restricting those agencies, programs, and services. It will soon become clear to even the most ardent MAGA supporters which of those government functions should be eliminated, which should be modified, and which should be expanded. We will emerge from this experiment wounded but not necessarily crippled, and our federal bureaucracy could actually become more efficient and less intrusive after a reorganization.
It is already evident, unfortunately, that this experiment will cost taxpayers trillions of dollars to recover. At some point this dose of reality might result in a more rational tax structure that shifts the burden of supporting government entirely off the workers, and more fairly onto the wealthy individuals and corporations that depend on the labor and purchasing ability of workers for their success, and especially onto those who build wealth by manipulating currency and financial markets.
The greatest good that will emerge from this experiment, however, will be the end of extreme conservatism in our government. Defeated not by progressive thinking but by its own inherent incompetence and refusal to address the needs and desires of the people being governed. This is already happening in other countries as a direct result of their voters observing what is going on in our country. Progressive candidates have beaten favored conservatives in Canada, Australia, and France. The United Kingdom kicked out the Conservatives last year after their disastrous Brexit policy led to the same economic hardship now befalling the United States. In some ways it’s unfortunate that we cannot call a new election as easily as they can.